Each accurate piece of information added to the overall impression that this must be Nicholas.

The inconsistencies — the wrong eyes, the wrong accent, the wrong face — were real, and Carey was not blind to them.

But they were processed through the filter of hope and provided with explanations (the chemical eye injections, the traumatic effect on speech) that Carey chose to accept.

This is not a unique psychological failure.

It is a pattern that has been documented in other cases of mistaken identification and false hope.

People who want to believe something badly enough find ways to accommodate the evidence for it and explain away the evidence against it.